Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.789

c7.789

§ 23. Partition. So long as the property consisted almost exclusively of immovables the joint-property of the family certainly appeared to be the best arrangement suited to the economic condition. Traces are not wanting to prove that even whole villages formerly used the fields in common as it is found in the Punjab even to this day (§ 26). At all events, the lists of impartible properties (*avibhājya*) in the Smṛtis, often very comprehensive in themselves, indicate that there was a time when the family property was indivisible, as is the case among the Tarwaads of Malabar at the present day. Thus according to Uśanas the income out of (or claim to) sacrifices, fields, writings, prepared food, water and the wife's property should remain undivided among the relations (*sagotra*) up to the thousandth generation. Śaṅkhalikhita mentions among impartible properties a house (*na vāstuvibhāgo*, instead of which however a few commentators read *cāsti vibhāgo*). Even according to Bṛh. 25, 93 the relations (*sapinḍa*), whether their property is undivided or partitioned, have equal rights as far as the immovables are concerned, because nobody can give away, mortgage or sell the immovables alone. Elsewhere this author of course takes a more advanced view and lays down (l. c. 79-86) how things declared to be indivisible by previous authors³ can be partitioned. Thus the clothes and ornaments should be sold and then the proceeds of it divided and the same with the bonds